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[To be clear this is not an expungement "clinic" - no expungement, record sealing, or rights restoration is happening at this event]

During the week of September 21 to 28, events will be held across the United States aimed at making expungement, record sealing, and rights restoration more accessible to individuals who have been impacted by the justice system.

On September 21, every Code for America brigade (there are over 80 across the country) will celebrate the kick-off of National Expungement Week by holding a National Day of Action.

Code for BTV, your local brigade (civic technologists), will help ring-in the week with an event dedicated to making the process of expungement in Vermont more transparent and accessible.

We will be bringing together anyone who cares to join us from the legal community, those working on justice reform, and members of our technology community that focus on user research. Together we will work to create an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of our state’s expungement process. Our hope is that this effort can inform legislative decision making and provide a roadmap that any law professional could use to start navigating expungement on their own. We will be creating a repeatable set of user research steps that can be used to work with justice impacted citizens (those needing or having achieved expungement). These steps will be tailored to our state’s expungement process. The brigade will deploy these steps at public outreach events to gain an understanding of the logistical and emotional impact that our state’s expungement process has on our citizens. This event and follow-up outreach events will allow us to see expungement in the state both from the inside looking out and the outside looking in.

Code for BTV will be demonstrating the free, open source tool we have built for VT Legal Aid that automates much of the effort in creating expungement petitions in Vermont. We will be using fake data for this demonstration so that anyone may see how it works.